Do you think of parenting your child with special needs a calling from God? Do you ever struggle about how to respond to his call? It’s sometimes a struggle for guest blogger Rebekah Benimoff as this post shows.

How to Respond to a Special Needs Calling

Today I read a word from God via the heart of a mother: “Life is not an emergency. Life is brief and it is fleeting, but is not an emergency… Emergencies are sudden unexpected events—but is anything under the sun unexpected to God?”

Sigh.

My heart resonates with desire to live every moment fully, to ferret out paths of gratitude which buoy up the soul and sustain, even when life is chaotic and unclear.

What if My Life is Speckled with Emergencies?

The question: But what if life—my life—is speckled with emergencies?

The words on the page answer back, “…life is so urgent it necessitates living slow.”

I nod. There is much in my life that I would call urgent. “In Christ, urgent means slow. In Christ the most urgent necessitates a slow and steady reverence.”

I think back across weeks and months, even years, and understanding lights. The paradox in our many emergencies is this: these sudden unexpected events require me to slow down. To watch carefully. To live fully in the moment. Yes, there is the flurry and the fear and the lightning trip to the hospital, the ER, the children’s medical center. But what follows is always time to wait.

Is it my Calling to Keep My Baby Alive?

When I am so still, anxiety billows up, and I have to pray away fear. I take seriously this caregiving, this challenge to do my part in seeking after ways to help a not-big-enough boy to grow. I watch carefully the peaks and valleys of managing blood sugars and digestive issues and aiming towards balance. But sometimes I grasp more responsibility than is mine to shoulder. I think it is my job to keep my son alive. Oh, Father God! How does a mother’s heart become utterly spent? When this mother tries to claim that which is for the hands of God alone.

It is mine to love and soothe and serve and offer care in the ways that my son’s uniquely designed body and soul need. But it is not my job to keep my baby alive.

I weep with the truth of it. Mothering a child with medical needs is hard and helpless all at once. I’ve spoken the strain and struggle. “I spend my life just trying to keep him alive.” I am consumed, depleted. I pour out all I am and still it is not enough. It has been my pursuit but it is not my calling. As if I could breathe life and breath and wholeness into his body with all my striving. But there is a breath that comes only and always from heaven.

My Calling Is to Let Go

My calling is to let go. When devastating unknowns compel me to run into my prayer closet and cry out to God, his sweet whisper urges, let go. Not of the tenderness in a mother’s heart, not of prayer—for it is a most powerful weapon against the enemy. Not even of the natural desire to protect and to resolve medical struggles. Let go—but not of the desire that a precious little one JUST FEEL BETTER and GROW. The Voice seeking to calm and sustain invites, 

My Calling Is to Let God Equip Me

Now is the moment to walk free—to throw off fear and expectation and allow God to equip me for what He’s called me to and let go of the rest. I am certain this will be a process, a journey with many needed reminders. But I am also sure that abundant living is not possible without this letting go. So I seek the altar, the place of release. And the Voice resounds with love I need like breath: God does not expect me to be perfect, He simply asks me to be real and allow the blanket of grace to cover that which I cannot… and was never meant to. We tarry here, in this holy place, and I find rest for my soul.

What Has God Called You to Do?

Do you sense God calling you through Rebekah’s words? What is he calling you to do?

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photo credit: www.freedigitalphotos.net